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It may not have a classy or intimidating name, but I’m sure that robots speak of the HAROP loitering munition with great respect – or perhaps fear -  when they… get together for, um, poker night. Israel Aerospace Industries’ bad boy is a remote-controlled, unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) that can be deployed from a…

I’m sure you’ve seen the plethora of ground combat robots that we’ve featured here at technabob, and I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned at least a couple of aerial drones. Now, with the conclusion of the frighteningly successful Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Autonomus Underwater Vehicles competition (AUVSI AUV), all our base are really belong…

iKey’s AK-39 military-grade wearable keyboard is built to operate in “very harsh electromagnetic interference (EMI) environments”, as well as provide an interface that allows for one-armed typing. It also has a backlight that is compatible with night vision technology. The snap-on faceplate was designed to avoid registering accidental keystrokes, and is easy to remove and…

Tonight’s nightmare is brought to you by the US Air Force Research Laboratory and their Playstation 1 – era CG presentation of the Micro Air Vehicles project. Narrated by someone who sounds almost exactly the same as Metal Gear Solid’s Col. Roy Campbell, the video outlines the ideal capabilities of MAVs, which are basically robotic…

The Office of Naval Research – not to be confused with the Office of Navel Research, a pet project of the previous president – recently awarded defense contractor Raytheon a year-long contract to develop laz0rb33mz. No seriously, the US Navy wants to have a 100-kilowatt Free Electron Laser as a weapon that will be installed…

I think the best advantage in sending robots instead of humans to armed conflicts is simply the fact that robots are not human. Robots don’t have feelings or families, so no one gets hurt if a robot goes down, not even its fellow robots. Robots are not alive, which means they can’t die.
Brainz showcased…

DARPA’s Self-Explanation Learning Framework (SELF) program “seeks to construct systems that can participate in their own construction.” Imagine a robot helping build itself. Who or what runs DARPA these days? Are there still humans in there? Things are moving too fast folks. Let’s look at the matchup for a sec: Human fetus – looks cute/scary/funny,…

iRobot’s new military robot might not have a personality per se, but the moment I saw them they reminded me of the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell. The little fella is called Ember, and its being developed as a disposable yet durable networked mobile swarm. The one-pound robot can be equipped with sensors and…

Asimov concocted the Three Laws of Robotics in 1942 and built many of his stories around these rules. While Asimov benefited greatly from those rules as an artistic concept, giving him ideas to explore, in the future our lives may really depend on robot ethics.  Fortunately, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech named Ronald…

Oh crap. I knew it. Those stupid robots at SparkFun’s race were publicized to lull us all into a false sense of security: “Wow it just went for a dive at the lake HAHA st00pid botz.” Yet now we have cyborg beetles. CyBORG beetles people.
Developed by a team of DARPA-funded engineers – led by…

(Sub)urban warfare has a new face, and it goes by the name of Paintball Panzer. The pint-sized tank has a turret-mounted paintball gun which lets you fire rounds of paint ammo while keeping you safe and sound from the tomatoes and eggs which may be thrown at you in return.

The Funtrak Mini Paintball Tank…

Most video game enthusiasts will tell you that the Xbox 360’s joystick is one of the best designed gaming controllers of all time. Now it appears to have gotten the “thumbs up” from the U.S. Army.

From the looks of these photos taken in article over at ZDNet, at least some of the Army’s remote…